President Obama did the right thing by putting the brakes on this dangerous 1,700 mile oil pipeline that would run from Canada through America's heartland and put our land, climate and drinking water at risk. Now the President can put American families ahead of Big Oil profits by rejecting Keystone XL.

2012 will be a seminal year in our fight to move our country Beyond Oil. Big Oil and their cronies in Congress know this as well. And they're in a panic. We're already starting to see a barrage of misinformation. Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner and the other Big Oil allies in Congress are trying to scam the American people with an expensive, unnecessary and dangerous tar sands pipeline to deliver billions in profits to oil companies.

The pipeline will not help with energy security, it will create far fewer jobs than promised, the oil brought to the U.S. will be shipped overseas tax-free and there are huge risks to our waterways, farmland and climate - TransCanada's earlier pipeline spilled 14 times in the first 12 months of operation. 2012 will be the year we decide where we stand as a country on moving Beyond Oil.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Congress are starting the election year locked in a tussle over a proposed 1,700-mile (2,735-kilometer) oil pipeline from Canada to Texas that will force the White House to make a politically risky choice between two key Democratic constituencies.

Some unions say the Keystone XL pipeline would create thousands of jobs. Environmentalists fear it could lead to an oil spill disaster.

A law Obama signed just before Christmas that temporarily extended the payroll tax cut included a Republican-written provision compelling him to make a speedy decision on whether to build the pipeline. The administration is warning it would rather say no than rush a decision in an election year.

It's a dicey proposition for Obama, who enjoyed strong support from both organized labor and environmentalists in his winning 2008 campaign for the White House.

Environmental advocates, already disappointed with his failure to achieve climate change legislation and the administration's decision to delay new smog standards, have made it clear that approval of the pipeline would dampen their enthusiasm for Obama in the upcoming November election.

Some liberal donors even threatened to cut off funds to Obama's re-election campaign to protest the project, which opponents say would transport "dirty oil" that requires huge amounts of energy to extract.

If he rejects the pipeline, Obama risks losing support from organized labor, a key part of the Democratic base, for thwarting thousands of jobs.

Obama appeared to have skirted what some dubbed the "Keystone conundrum" in November when the State Department announced it was postponing a decision on the pipeline until after this year's election. Officials said they needed extra time to study routes that avoid an environmentally sensitive area of Nebraska that supplies water to eight states.

The affected area stretches through the Sandhills region of northern Nebraska, but the concerns were serious enough that the state's governor and senators opposed the project until the pipeline was moved.

Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, who opposed the initial route, says he supports efforts to accelerate the project, noting that provisions in the payroll tax bill allow the project developer to find a new route avoiding the Sandhills.

The new route would have to be approved by Nebraska environmental officials and the State Department, which has authority because the pipeline would cross an international border.

The pipeline would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. The project's developer, Calgary-based TransCanada, says the pipeline could create as many as 20,000 jobs, a figure opponents say is inflated. A State Department report last summer said the pipeline would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction.

The payroll tax cut law gives the Obama administration 60 days to decide whether to allow construction of the pipeline.

An "arbitrary deadline" for the permit decision would compromise the process, short-circuiting time needed to conduct required environmental reviews and preventing the issuance of a permit, the State Department warned in a written statement on Dec. 12. Obama administration officials confirmed that view after the payroll tax bill was approved.

Republicans call the threat little more than an excuse that allows Obama to placate environmental groups while not rejecting the pipeline outright.

"The only thing arbitrary about this decision is the decision by the president to say, 'Well, let's wait until after the next election,' " said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Boehner and other Republicans say the pipeline would help Obama achieve his top priority — creating jobs — without costing a dime of taxpayer money. They hope to portray Obama's reluctance to approve the pipeline as a sign he favors environmentalists over jobs.

Russ Girling, TransCanada's president and chief executive, said his company would do whatever is necessary to make sure the project is approved.

"We've had more than enough surprises on this," said TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard.

In Nebraska, where the pipeline faces strong resistance, state officials are awaiting an environmental study that will determine a new route. Officials have said the review will take six to nine months.

Some landowners in the Sandhills celebrated the decision to reroute the project, but the pipeline's strongest opponents say they still have concerns about the prospect of the government using its power of eminent domain to seize land, as well as liability issues in case of a spill.

"Republicans have bullied their way to get a reckless rider attached to a bill that was supposed to be about helping middle-class families," said Jane Kleeb, executive director of the group Bold Nebraska, which opposes the pipeline.

With the bill signed into law, Obama "must do the right thing for our land, water and families' health by denying the pipeline permit," Kleeb said.

Project supporters say U.S. rejection of the pipeline would not stop it from being built. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said TransCanada could pursue an alternative route through Canada to the West Coast, where oil could be shipped to China and other Asian markets.

"Canada is going to develop this no matter what, and that oil is either going to come to the United States or it's going to go to a place like China. We want it here," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Opponents call the West Coast option farfetched, noting that Canadian regulators have announced a one-year delay for a similar project that would carry tar sands oil to British Columbia, on Canada's western coast.

Native groups strongly oppose both the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by TransCanada rival Enbridge. Canada's First Nations have constitutionally protected treaty rights and unsettled land claims that could allow them to block or significantly delay both pipelines.

Unions are watching closely. Unemployment in construction is far higher than other industries, with more than 1.1 million construction workers jobless, said Brent Bookers, director of construction at the Laborers' International Union of North America.

"For many members of the Laborers, this project is not just a pipeline, it is a lifeline," Bookers said, adding, "Too many hard-working Americans are out of work, and the Keystone XL pipeline will change that dire situation for thousands of them."

Roger Toussaint, international vice president of the Transport Workers Union, opposes the pipeline.

"The dangers of the pipeline are compelling, and no one should believe the claims of either the Republican leadership or the energy companies, with respect to the project being shovel ready or with respect to the number of jobs it's going to produce," he said.

From Theodore Roosevelt creating the National Parks System to Richard Nixon establishing the Environmental Protection Agency to George H.W. Bush signing a strengthened Clean Air Act, Republicans have a long history of supporting common sense solutions to problems facing our wildlife, air, water and public health. Will this year’s crop of GOP candidates follow that conservative presidential tradition?

So far, the signs aren’t promising. I’ve heard plenty about jobs, but little of protecting the rivers, lakes and wildlife habitat that supports thousands of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation related jobs across New Hampshire. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife, in New Hampshire 228,000 people spent $177 million on fishing in 2006. Every dollar spent on conservation programs here in New Hampshire delivers jobs and economic activity.

Right now the Granite State duck hunters are asking “Where are the ducks?” and fishermen and women are asking “Where is the ice?” Until just a few days ago, going into late December, there was no ice in much of New Hampshire. Worse yet to the north in Maine and beyond winter and the snow and ice normally expected by now has not happened. As a result ducks and geese have been slow to migrate south to the New Hampshire’s coast this fall. And safe ice for this state’s ice fishermen is but a wish for now. Both this state’s hunters and fishermen are impacted by a warming climate. Worse yet all of the dozens of businesses that count on these sportsmen and women are up against a tough economy worsened by the lack of ice and snow. A good old fashioned winter just can’t be counted on any more it seems.

Climate change also poses a threat New Hampshire’s economic health many other ways. The skiing industry directly employs 17,000 people in New Hampshire and pumps $650 million dollars a year into our economy, a revenue stream that’s critically threatened by warmer winters. And if ski resorts are forced to make more snow, it will cost plenty to cover one acre of ski trails with one foot of snow that takes up to 180,000 gallons of water to be pumped. Along with the ski industry is the snowmobile industry which contributes another $1.2 billion dollars to this state’s economy, according to a 2004 UNH study. Snowmobiling supports thousands of jobs as well, especially in the Great North Woods.

So I have a few simple questions for this year’s crop of presidential candidates: Where are the ducks? What’s your plan to protect America’s natural resources? Will you support mainstream values by standing up for the wildlife, our national forests, and clean air and water that enrich all Americans? Or will you be going to Washington, prioritizing special interests and protecting the few at the expense of our environment?

Eric Orff is a wildlife biologist from Epsom. He can be reached at 603-736-4663 or at his web site nhfishandwildlife.com

MEREDITH, N.H. (CBS) – It’s not easy leaving Newt Gingrich at a loss for words, but it happened Thursday night.

He went up to Meredith, New Hampshire to try to convince a few hundred Tea Party members that he’s their candidate in Tuesday’s GOP Presidential Primary.

At one point, a young man asked Gingrich what he would do for the future of the younger generation.

But the man took a unique way of asking the question.

“I know that many people in this room are on their way out,” the unidentified man said.

“I say that in a respectful way, that in maybe ten years, a lot of people in this room will have passed away.”

That line drew laughter from the crowd, as the man said, “I’m serious.”

“Well that’s certainly a level of optimism we haven’t had all day,” Gingrich replied, adding the man should “revise and extend” his remarks for the audience and not defend the initial statement because “it’s gonna get worse, believe me.”

“I noticed that in my age bracket no one cares about politics because it is something for old people, I say that respectfully,” the man continued, “because it seems like a lot of the issues are catered to them.”

Then he got to his question.

“I would like to know what hope I have as a hard-working, young individual, what change will you actually accomplish in Washington? What can be done in eight years that will affect the life that I have yet to live, that you have already lived?”

That drew more laughter and applause from the crowd.

“You know, there are moments in this business where I’m just left speechless,” Gingrich said.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Spencer Woodman: Can Walmart Be Unionized?

Walmart has a long track record of suppressing efforts to unionize its employees. But over the past year, Walmart workers have tried a new method of organizing in informal groups that are not union-certified but still function as instruments for workers to negotiate with management and assert their rights. In this episode of Nation Conversations,Spencer Woodman sits down with Executive Editor Betsy Reed to explain how this campaign, known as OUR Walmart, has succeeded where others have failed and the implications of such campaigns for the retailer and its employees.

For more on Walmart workers' new unionization campaigns, read Spencer Woodman's article "Labor Takes Aim at Walmart—Again," which appears in the January 23, 2012 issue of The Nation magazine.

Labor Takes Aim at Walmart—Again

In October two shabby buses filled with Walmart employees stopped unannounced outside the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. As the employees filed into the building’s expansive parking lot, plainclothes private security personnel sporting sleek sunglasses and Walmart emergency response badges rushed in and swiftly corralled the employees onto a public sidewalk. Members of a new union-backed campaign to organize Walmart, the workers had come from around the country to ask Walmart’s CEO, Mike Duke, for better wages and better treatment.

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The hoped-for meeting was not granted. Within minutes, a dozen Bentonville police officers rushed in to reinforce the security guards in forming a barricade between the employees and their headquarters’ front door. A labor relations representative emerged from the mostly windowless building. She announced that she would meet only with workers who carried Walmart employee discount cards in addition to their company badges and state IDs. Without discount cards, the

protesting employees would be arrested.

“I didn’t come here today to go shopping, so why do I need my discount card?” said Girshriela Green, a young mother who until recently worked at Walmart in Southern California. “I feel totally disrespected. Shame on them for not having the common decency to sit down and talk to their own associates.”

This recent unrest in Arkansas—the second Bentonville action by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)–supported OUR Walmart group in a span of four months—is part of the widest effort yet to organize Walmart, the world’s largest private sector employer and the labor movement’s most intractable foe in the era of declining unionism. Over the past year, a loose coalition of labor groups has redoubled engagement with the retail giant in a series of campaigns using nontraditional organizing strategies—namely, the formation of informal groups of workers that are not union certified but attempt to assert themselves to management all the same. OUR Walmart, the largest initiative, focuses on the company’s retail stores. Another new campaign, Warehouse Workers United (WWU), focuses on logistics workers in Walmart-contracted warehouses in Southern California and is launching a lean effort to coordinate workers internationally along Walmart’s supply chain.

“A year ago, I would not have predicted this strategy of nonunion worker organization,” says Dorian Warren, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University. “I see it in the context of failed past strategies. It’s clear that you cannot run a formal NLRB election at Walmart. This PR strategy of beating Walmart over the head with bad publicity is reaching its limits. And frankly, when the Supreme Court struck down the Dukescase it became clear that the legal strategy was also reaching a dead end.”

Indeed, until recently it appeared that the labor movement was lying prostrate in its engagement with the Arkansas colossus—a company whose anti-unionism, both visionary and vicious, has triumphed at every turn. In 2000 the UFCW won an election at a small meatpacking unit at a Texas Walmart, only to learn that the company would dissolve all in-store meatpacking companywide. Five years later, an entire Quebec Walmart was shuttered just weeks after its employees voted to unionize. The fines the $400 billion company incurs from such boldly illegal retaliations are minimal compared with the potential cost of raising wages.

Such defeats notwithstanding, union leaders have decided that organizing retail in America is not feasible without first dealing with Walmart, a company that, more than any other on earth, sets labor standards across industries that feed its vast global supply chain. The core of Walmart’s low-price wizardry lies in its innovative mechanisms for minimizing labor costs, most often the number-one expense of production in low-end retail.

In recent years, as it has suffered dismal sales reports and turmoil in management, Walmart has doubled down on its strategy of suppressing wages and benefits for its 2.1 million employees. This is evidenced all the way from Bangladeshi garment factories, which maintain working conditions that verge on slavery to meet Walmart’s rock-bottom procurement prices, to sales floors across the Americas, where managers are given increasingly narrow budgets to pay staff, who make an average of around $8 an hour and often have to rely on government-funded food and healthcare programs.

“All along this company’s global supply chain we are seeing millions of workers in disparate work roles but who are facing the same issues: increasing precariousness, exploitation and the inability to democratically organize,” says an international organizer at WWU.

In this intense workforce squeeze, labor groups see an opportunity.

* * *

In just over a year, OUR Walmart has signed up thousands of employees in hundreds of Walmarts in more than thirty states. Though not yet being seriously discussed, unionization remains an open, if distant, option. In launching the campaign, the UFCW sent hundreds of its members door-to-door to encourage Walmart employees to join the group, which requires a $5 monthly dues payment.

Organizers credit the group’s brisk expansion to the ditching of formal union drives, in which organizers must win a prescheduled election at a store. “Walmart is very effective in dealing with a classic union strategy, where there’s an election coming that it can plan around,” says Wade Rathke, the founder of ACORN. He helped organize Walmarts from Florida to California in an experiment with nonunion organizing beginning in 2004. “But when there’s no election coming, they don’t know how to deal with these noncertified workers’ associations.”

This nonelection route bypasses official forms of collective bargaining, which mandate that workers and management sit down to agree on compensation and hours. Instead, these worker associations bargain outside pre-established frameworks of negotiation, using any means legal to pressure management into recognizing their interests—an arrangement that closely resembles pre–New Deal unionism. With little institutional arbitration, this model can be seen as a rawer, more organic form of workplace struggle.

National labor law broadly protects nonunion worker activities, including collective actions and even nonunion strikes. “In a nonunion situation, the employers do not have to agree to what these groups demand, but if the employer retaliates, there is a right to file an unfair practice charge and the NLRB would enforce it,” says Lance Compa, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University.

OUR Walmart member Jackie Goebel took advantage of such unofficial channels of bargaining this past summer at her store in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

When she began as a cashier in 1988, Goebel saw Walmart as the small town’s most attractive workplace, one that she associated with the market-inspired humanitarianism of its founder, Sam Walton. More recently, Goebel’s satisfaction with her job has soured. In 2005 her daughter, a young mother who was a cashier at the same store, went to the doctor with troubling symptoms. The doctor diagnosed ovarian cysts and insisted she get a hysterectomy. In the fall of 2006, she approached Goebel and said she had ovarian cancer. “I asked her, ‘Why did you not have the hysterectomy when they first suggested it to you?’” Goebel recalls. “And she looked directly at me and said, ‘I was afraid if I took the time off they’d fire me.’” Goebel’s daughter died in 2007 at 37.

“I don’t hold Walmart culpable for my daughter having cancer,” says Goebel. “But she was living in this horrible fear of losing her job, and had she gone and gotten the surgery when the doctor suggested, it would have bought her years more with her kids.”

While coping with the consequences of Walmart’s well-documented practice of firing employees with medical issues, Goebel also began to notice that her manager was slashing wages while increasingly demanding that the workers perform task volumes she calls “not humanly possible.” Since its launch, the Kenosha OUR Walmart group has not grown impressively. It has eight members. Nonetheless, this past summer the small group confronted management to demand fair treatment and access to their employee files. Goebel had been the subject of unexplained disciplinary action, which she hoped her record would clarify. After she filed a complaint with her state labor department, the store’s management showed Goebel her file. “We still have a lot of work to do, but these little gains have helped considerably,” she says.

Numbers-wise, OUR Walmart has had more success in Southern California, where one member reports that more than half of her store’s 500 workers have joined the group. “Six months ago, under our old store manager, we were not treated with respect,” says Venanzi Luna, a department manager (department managers at Walmart still earn hourly wages and thus legally belong to nonmanagerial ranks). “So many people were unwillingly part time, our hours kept getting cut, and individual associates were expected to do the work of three. It was miserable.”

Over the summer, Luna took her human resources coordinator by surprise when she and twenty other OUR Walmart member employees walked into his office and demanded that the store’s top manager be fired. In short order, Bentonville flew in one of its labor relations specialists to discuss with employees how the workplace could be improved. Within a month, the unpopular store manager was quietly replaced with one more favorable to employees, and scheduling improved markedly. The store bumped several workers from part time to full time. The group, however, has had no success in seeking wage increases.

* * *

Challenges Walmart

By Tom Geiger, UFCW21 -
On Thursday morning, at an action in Bellevue, WA, a group of local organizations announced the launch of a new effort to change the practices of the largest employer in America - Walmart.

Despite attempts to re-brand itself and posting $16 billion in profits the company told part-time employees that they would no longer qualify for health care coverage.

The local launch is part of a larger nationwide campaign - Making Change at Walmart.

Pairing up with this action and launch is an ad that will appear in the Thursday edition of the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce showcasing the coalition’s message.

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- If you're stuck with an unwanted Christmas present of the electronic variety but don't have a receipt, you may have more options than you think. Online auction giant eBay(EBAY) has a site dedicated to buying electronic gadgets from consumers directly without a receipt, and will even accept late model devices you may have thought were "unreturnable."

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

It’s absolutely shocking news: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has publicly admitted it is responsible for the mass poisoning of tens of millions of birdsover the last several years. It’s all part of the USDA’s program called “Bye Bye Blackbird,” and we even have the USDA’s spreadsheet where they document how many millions of birds (and other animals) they’ve poisoned to death.

Not all the mysterious bird die-offs that have been witnessed around the globe recently are due to unexplained causes. A recent mass die-off event witnessed in Yankton, South Dakota was traced back to the USDA which admitted to carrying out a mass poisoning of the birds.

After hundreds of starlings were found dead in the Yankton Riverside Park, concerned citizens began to investigate. Before long, a USDA official called the local police and admitted they had poisoned the birds. “They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park,” says Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel, as reported by KTIV (www.ktiv.com/Global/story.as…).

The USDA then confirmed the story and explained it was all “part of a large killing” in Nebraska. Some of the birds that ate the poison apparently flew all the way to Yankton before succumbing to the poison.

So why was the USDA poisoning birds in the first place? A Nebraska farmer was apparently complaining that the starlings were defecating in his feed meal. The answer to this conundrum apparently isn’t tocover your feed meal but rather call the USDA and ask them to poison thousands of birds.

The USDA complied, apparently agreeing this was a brilliant idea. So they put out a poison called DRC-1339 and allowed thousands of birds to feed on that poison.

“We’re doing it to address, in this case, agricultural damage as well as the potential for human health and safety issues,” she said. That’s just a lie, of course. In what universe do starlings pose a threat to human health and safety?

The USDA even has a name for this mass poisoning program: Bye Bye Blackbird. Through the use of poisons such as DRC-1339, the USDA has killed more than four million birds over the last several years, reports Truthout (www.truth-out.org/bye-bye-bl…).

Remember, these are mass bird killings that are funded with your tax dollars. It all makes you wonder whether the government is, in fact, responsible for many of the other mysterious animal deaths that have been reported across the country (and around the globe).

It also makes you wonder: If the federal government thinks nothing of murdering 4 million living, breathing birds, then what else might they be capable of doing out of a total lack of respect for wildlife?

And if the USDA poisons birds because certain groups become too populous, what do you suppose is planned for when human population grows too large?